Let's put the important news
on top, for once. This year's winner
of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:

Cheryl's mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping
her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing
pile of forgotten memories.

More good writin' at the link.

President Obama's speech
last night contained multiple occurrances of one of my red flags:

Finally, let's ask the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to
give up some of their tax breaks and special deductions.

[…]

This balanced approach asks everyone to give a little without requiring
anyone to sacrifice too much.

[…]

The only reason this balanced approach isn't on its way to becoming law
right now is because a significant number of Republicans in Congress are
insisting on a cuts-only approach -- an approach that doesn't ask the
wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at
all. And because nothing is asked of those at the top of the income
scales, , such an approach would close the deficit only with more severe
cuts to programs we all care about -- cuts that place a greater burden
on working families.

[…]

Most Americans, regardless of political party, don't understand how we
can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we
ask
corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other
companies don't get. How can we ask a student to pay more for college
before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate
than their secretaries? How can we slash funding for education and clean
energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don't need
and didn't ask for?

[…]

What we're talking about under a balanced approach is asking Americans
whose incomes have gone up the most over the last decade -- millionaires
and billionaires -- to share in the sacrifice everyone else has to make.

[…]

Again, they will refuse to ask the wealthiest Americans to give up their
tax cuts or deductions.

That's a lotta asking, friends. And nearly all in the context of
"asking" some despised fraction of citizens to surrender more money
to Your Federal Government.

In a just world, using such dishonest, weaselly rhetoric by high
government officials would be grounds for old-school punishment.

"Mr. Obama, step to the chalkboard, and write 'Taxpayers aren't asked'
one hundred times. Neatly. Then you will write a 300-word essay on the
meaning of that statement. And please remember: each time in the future
you
claim that taxpayers will be 'asked' to fund one of your schemes, you
will be 'asked' (in the same sense)
to come back here and redo this assignment, doubled."

If I could do that without getting involved with the Secret Service, I
would. In a heartbeat.

Pun Salad had a good time earlier this year making fun of
the New York Times designated food nag, Mark Bittman.
(
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and
here.
) Jacob
Sullum takes up the task this week, analyzing Bittman's recent
call for increased taxes on "bad" food while subsidizing "good" food.
Sullum does some needed
fact-checking, but also zeros in on the liberty question:

But the weakest part of Bittman's argument, since paying the
taxes he proposes won't be optional, is his justification for
using force to change people's diets. The government simply would
be "fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good," he says.
Treating diet-related diseases costs money, he adds. "The need is
indisputable," he avers, "since heart disease, diabetes and cancer
are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet."
Furthermore, "look at the action government took in the case of
tobacco." In short, "public health is the role of the
government, and our diet is right up there with any other public
responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit."
So many assumptions, both fiscal and moral, packed into so little
space. Bittman does not pause for a moment to consider the vast
expanse of human behavior that is subject to government
manipulation under his theory of public health.

If only Bittman and his ilk were content with just nagging.
Iowa City's own Will
Wilkinson is also on target:

Anyway, if public health is the role of government, let's not
get bogged down in this nonsense about rigging the relative prices of
arugula and Ho-Hos. Let's just raise the price of being
unhealthy. Because why punish a lean fellow who runs 45 miles per
week just because Chocolate Black Cherry Mr Pibb happens to be his
personal ambrosia? And what happens if the
paleo-diet
fanatics displace our current cohort of diet experts and inflict upon us
$10 loaves of bread and subsidised Slim Jims? What then? Free
government venison, that's what.

Bittman simply can't be lampooned and reviled enough.

I'd never stopped to consider the strangeness of the word
"impregnable". As in "impregnable fortress": doesn't
it sound as if one could get that fortress pregnant?

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